Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
an outline biography

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody was born in Billerica,
Massachusetts in May 1804 as the oldest of an eventual seven
children of Nathaniel Peabody and Elizabeth Palmer both of whom
were teachers. Nathaniel later retrained in dentistry and
practiced at Salem, Massachusetts.

Elizabeth was taught by her parents from an early age with her
mother encouraging a high degree of accomplishment in a broad
range of subjects. She excelled in the history, literature and
Latin whilst also being quite daring as a horsewoman as well as a
crack shot. Elizabeth was very close to her sisters Mary Tyler
(born 1807) and Sophia Amelia (born 1809).

Elizabeth became a school teacher in 1822 and spent some years
in that profession and private tutoring in Boston and Maine. She
and her sister Mary were the principals behind a successful
private school in Brookline for a time.

A most popular and influential Unitarian minister, Dr. William
Ellery Channing, enrolled his daughter Mary in Miss Elizabeth and
Mary Peabody's school in 1826, many new pupils followed this
example, and the school was given a significant boost in
popularity and attendance. Miss Elizabeth Peabody incidentally
raised her profile of social prominence by becoming accepted,
because of her own talents, as a virtual assistant to Dr. William
Ellery Channing in some aspects his pastoral role. Particularly
relevant in this regard was Miss Elizabeth Peabody being
consulted in relation to the framing of the sermons that Channing
was planning to deliver. In these times it was often the case
that the content, and delivery, of a sermon was of prime
importance in retaining the attention and respect of a
congregation.

The Peabody's school eventually failed largely due to a
mishandling of its finances by a third party. Mary then spent
some time assisting the ailing Sophia on a trip to Cuba in search
of an improvement in health whilst Elizabeth became the first
person in Boston to support herself by conducting "reading
parties," or lectures to small groups of women on various
literary and philosophical topics in return for the price of a
ticket. Other modest income was derived from the writing of
articles for publications.

Elizabeth Peabody also went to work for Bronson Alcott at his
innovative Temple School that had opened in 1834 in Boston and
was to be informed by a transcendentalist ethos. This school
failed however and Elizabeth
Peabody suffered some significant immediate loss by way of
accumulated unpaid salary at this time. More significantly she
was to also suffer a more enduring loss of acceptability as a
teacher because of her association with the controversial educationalist Bronson
Alcott.

In 1837 the rather attractive Miss Sophia Amelia Peabody met
her neighbour Nathaniel Hawthorne as he came to call on Miss
Elizabeth Peabody. Elizabeth had helped to bring Nathaniel
Hawthorne's talent to a wider recognition drawing the attention
of the Ralph Waldo Emerson circle to Hawthorne. The poet Jones
Very was also decisively noticed as a literary figure by
Elizabeth Peabody and Emerson in 1839.

In these times Elizabeth Palmer Peabody decided to attempt to
earn a living by going into business as a book seller and
subscription librarian.

In these times it was not socially expected that women would
seek to involve themselves as business people. As publisher as
well as book seller Elizabeth tended to disguise her gender
somewhat by styling herself as E.P. Peabody. It seems certain
that Elizabeth was the first woman publisher in Boston and was
very likely also the first in the United States also. She helped
to edit and publish the sermons of Dr. William Ellery Channing
and some works by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Her single issue of a
would-be Transcendentalist periodical, Aesthetic Papers, included
the first publication of Henry David Thoreau's Civil
Disobedience.

Elizabeth believed that a book shop ought to not merely sell
books but should function more widely as a meeting place for
authors and readers to congregate, discuss and purchase books.
Her Boston book shop (opened at 13 West Street, Boston, in July
1840) flourished and soon such people as Margret Fuller, the
Emersons, and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes came to speak there. The
Foreign Library aspect was advertised as only being open to fifty
subscribers each of whom were to subscribe five dollars for a
years borrowing priveleges. It was anticipated that only works of
high intrinsic merit would be on the library shelves with most
editions actually being in foreign languages.

The New England Transcendentalists were particularly drawn to
and influenced by the works of a number of foreign authors, such
as the German writers Kant, Fichte, Schleiermacher, Hegel,
Schelling, Goethe, and Novalis, the French writers Cousin and
Constant, the English Coleridge, Carlyle, and Wordsworth. More
explicitly mystical and philosophic titles such as those by Plato
and several Neoplatonists writers, Emanuel Swedenborg, and the
Sayings of Confucius were also in demand as were such Hindu
sacred texts as the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads.

Many in England and America were exposed to German thought
through the writings of Coleridge and Carlyle. Coleridge's Aids
to Reflection, first published in 1825, was edited in 1829 by
James Marsh, who added a lengthy introduction elucidating German
philosophy for the American reader. Carlyle wrote a life of
Schiller and translated from Goethe. Between 1838 and 1842,
George Ripley edited and published, in fourteen volumes,
Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature, which included
translations from French and German authors.

The inspiration and confirmation that the New England
Transcendentalists found in foreign literature, coupled with the
limited availability of foreign books, presented an opportunity
tailored to Miss Peabody. With her considerable linguistic
attainments, broad and deep reading, and love of intellectual
pursuit toward the end of perfection of self and society, she
combined knowledge, enthusiasm, and idealism in setting up the
Foreign Library.

The library and bookshop occupied the front parlour of the
building. Other Peabody family members were involved in the
enterprise as assistants. Paintings by Sophia Peabody, which were
available for purchase, hung on the walls.

Elizabeth added authorship of books, articles, and pamphlets
to her list of accomplishments. There were several childrens
titles, text books, teaching aids, and novels. On one occasion
Elizabeth had to bear financial loss when all of the copies one
of her titles, of which she had herself recently been the
publisher were lost in a warehouse fire.

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody became the eventual publisher of the
transcendentalist magazine, The Dial. Elizabeth was quite active
in transcendentalist circles - she herself contributed articles
to The Dial. Prominent transcendentalists such as Margaret Fuller
were amongst those who availed of the bookstore premises to hold
meetings, lectures, and conversational classes. The bookstore
served as an important organisational focus for New England
Transcendentalism. Much of the planning towards the establishment
of the utopian Brook Farm community was conducted at the Peabody
bookstore and library.

Elizabeth retained a life long commitment to Unitarianism from
the age of eight or nine when she had first heard the Rev.
William Ellery Channing preach at the Second Church in Salem,
Massachusetts. Transcendentalism was for Elizabeth something
other than, and different to, the Unitarianism to which she
personally adhered.

Their meeting of 1837 led to the marriage of Sophia Peabody
and Nathaniel Hawthorne in a ceremony performed, by James Freeman
Clarke in July 1842, in the back room of Elizabeth's bookstore.
In May, 1843, another family wedding took place there as Mary
exchanged vows with Horace Mann who was later to become a
Congressman and President of Antioch College.

By circa 1845 Elizabeth's book shop was struggling for want of
customers and persons wishing to hold intellectual meetings
there. Times had changed and issues that had been keenly inquired
into had lost their immediacy of interest. The shop remained open
however into the early 1850's.

All in all, the Foreign Library was, for several years, a
vital place. Miss Peabody loved being at the center of
intellectual ferment. In later years, she wrote about what it had
meant to her: "I had ... a Foreign Library of new French and
German books, and then I came into contact with the world as
never before. The Ripleys were starting Brook Farm, and they were
friends of ours. Theodore Parker was beginning his career, and
all these things were discussed in my bookstore by Boston lawyers
and Cambridge professors. Those were very living years for
me."

Elizabeth was employed for a short time again as a teacher but
subsequently spent some ten years earning a modest living by
personally traveling widely to promote, and sell, coloured charts
that she had herself developed as a teaching aid in the study of
history. During these years she became intrigued by the theories
of a German educator by the name of Friedrich Froebel who thought
that children should be taught in a caring and fun atmosphere
rather than by instilling fear in them throught the threat of a
physical discipline.

When Horace Mann died in 1859, a heartbroken Mary returned
from Ohio to Elizabeth, purchasing a house for herself and her
sister in Concord. There the two sisters once again opened a
school while Mary set about writing the Life and Works of Horace
Mann, which was later published in three volumes.

In 1860 Elizabeth and her sister Mary began the first
kindergarten in the United States. It was located in Pickney
Street, Boston, and based on the concepts developed by Friedrich
Froebel. With her sister Mary, she also wrote and published the
book called the Moral Culture Guide to Infancy and kindergarten
Guide, which was very successful within the educational field.
Elizabeth traveled widely promoting and constructing
kindergartens.

In 1867 she voyaged to Europe to take notes on the schooling
in several countries and to more directly study Froebel's methods
in an effort to gain inspiration as to what would work in
America. In 1870 when she returned, Elizabeth set up the first
free public-school in the United States.

Her main goal upon her return to the United States was to
develop kindergartens all over America and in a few years
kindergartens had spread all the way to San Francisco. Elizabeth
Peabody held training classes and lectures, she wrote articles
for magazines and also served as editor of the widely influential
Kindergarten Messenger (1873-1877).

In 1882 Elizabeth was invited to speak at the Bronson Alcott's
Concord School of Philosophy, she was so successful that she was
asked back for a second speech.

The Paiute Indian Princess Sarah Winnemucca came to Elizabeth
and Mary Peabody for help at a time when her people's lives were
being dramatically affected by migrations of white Americans
which encroached upon the Paiute's traditional lifestyles. Mary
Peabody wrote a book about the hardships of the Princess's
people. Elizabeth gave lectures and continued to appeal to people
for donations. The Peabody sisters helped Sarah Winnemuca to
establish an Indian run school. This school was bilingual and was
supportive of Paiute traditions. The Peabody sisters were however
made to seem naively idealistic, rather than worldly, by
association when a scandal emerged in the schools finances. This
was one of the last projects Elizabeth would work on with Mary
who died on February 11, 1887.

For the next few years Elizabeth was largely confined to her
bed but still continued her projects and crusades for just
causes.